Lunatic Tone Orchestra – Chronicle of Faith

Take symphonic metal and J-pop, what do you get? If you thought Babymetal, you’re not far off! While the emphasis is less on high-energy rock anthems or mellow ballads, Lunatic Tone Orchestra—狂奏楽団 (Kyō sōgaku-dan) in Japanese—is focused more on the prog aspect of the genre, calling themselves “progressive philosophy metal”, whatever that means. If you have a Coexist sticker on your car, you better start listening to this album right away!

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Forelunar – Beloved and a Thousand Seraphim

Iran is undergoing some kind of turmoil these days. Look it up, it’s a revolution! Forelunar offers us a beautiful ambient black metal as a soundtrack to these troubled times. I feel like this album would go well with the first Mesarthim ones. Although the latter is turned outwards to the stars, the former fixes its gaze inwards, to the ground, and in the hearts of men and women. It’s a fantastic album and you should give it a try.

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Brendan Byrnes – Holocene Dream

You never know what you’re gonna get with Brendan Byrnes. Is it going to be a psychedelic retro pop banger? Is it going to be a long-form cinematic piece? Is it going to be an instrumental rock album? Whatever it may be, be sure of one thing: it never disappoints. With Holocene Dream, Brendan serves us the beautiful colours of 27 and 22-EDO on a platter, in all their glory in eleven (almost) instrumental tracks. I’d even go so far as to say that this is one of his best works so far.

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Spinifex – Sings

I just noticed I almost always write about a new Spinifex release. And there’s a reason for that: it’s good stuff. On this album, as the name implies, the Spinifex sextet is joined by two wonderful singers: Priya and Björk. As you can probably assume, they come from two completely different musical backgrounds, and that gives the album a wide range of styles and inflexions, which is always something I appreciate.